Championing Leaders of Color in Housing Equity and Community Development

Community development unites people to take collective action to build stronger, more resilient places to live. Its roots are embedded in the backyards, living rooms, and church halls of people who, out of sheer will and perseverance, found ways to advocate for change in their neighborhoods. Over time, though, the field of community development has shifted from grassroots movements to the careers of specialized professionals. This shift has led to less racial diversity across the field and too few people of color in decision-making positions, leading to laws, policies, and practices that have perpetuated white supremacy—delivering excessive privilege to whites while disadvantaging Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.Championing Leaders of Color reflects an effort to uncover and disrupt the systems that perpetuate racial inequity in the communities we serve and the organizations where we work. Through this work, we aim to identify tactical strategies to promote equitable leadership in the field of community development where leaders of color are welcomed, supported, and equipped to succeed in advancing their careers as well as their organizations' missions.This report presents findings from a national survey distributed to stakeholders in the community development field, provides insights into data and trends gleaned from responses, and deliberates implications for leaders in, funders to, and supporters of the community development field to consider in service of equitable results. This work takes a narrow focus specific to community development and identifies barriers to equitable leadership opportunities while offering reparative solutions

Curriculum Development

This project examined the process of developing curriculum and analyzed its efficacy. Initially there were two sets of curriculum involved, but only one is included here because I was unable to gain the permission to publicly publish the other. The curriculum that is included is the curriculum I developed the Math Club at Fairhaven Middle School in Bellingham, WA. This curriculum was developed and implemented independently of any official curriculum regulations. Thus, I was free to personalize and change the curriculum based on what I saw was most needed in the classroom setting. However, there were still challenges that needed to be overcome in order to reach the goals that I set for the curriculum. I was given the position of Math Club Teacher for Fairhaven Middle School (FMS) in November of 2014. When I first started out, I had little to no direction in regards to what I was supposed to be teaching. So, first I developed the following three goals: I wanted the FMS Math club to… (1) be a welcoming environment where students could explore mathematics, (2) provide challenging material to stimulate problem solving, and (3) prepare students to compete in the Whatcom County Math Championship. So, to begin I studied the competition tests from previous years. After extensive study I developed a list of topics and skills that my students would be expected to know and developed worksheets and lesson plans based around them

Implementing the Stevens Square-Loring Heights Common Social Services Plan: An Examination of the NiCo Employment Project.

Prepared for the Stevens Square Community Organization, 612/871-7307. Sponsored by Neighborhood Planning for Community Revitalization, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Minnesota

The Saving Power of Community Creativity: Highlights of Arts, Culture, and Creative Placemaking Responses to COVID-19

For several years, the Center for Community Progress (Community Progress) and Metris Arts Consulting have explored how arts and culture organizations are revitalizing communities that have been hit hard with vacancy and abandonment. In mid-2020, as we began to understand the pandemic's devastating health, economic, and social impacts on communities and the policy demands surrounding the calls for racial justice, we also began hearing how community-based organizations using arts and culture had shifted their work to provide critical community support. This resource highlights the efforts of creative leaders during the pandemic and also seeks to inspire others trying to address acute needs.

Rubella immunity and serum perfluoroalkyl substances: Sex and analytic strategy

Background Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) have been associated with decreased immunity to child- hood tetanus and diphtheria immunizations. If these vaccinations are vulnerable to influence from PFASs, questions arise about associations with other common inoculations. Objective To examine whether serum PFASs were associated with reduced immunity to rubella immu- nization, and whether interactions with sex or ethnicity warranted analytic stratification. Usually, toxicology analyses are calculated controlling for race and sex. However, sex differ- ences in immune function have been reported and a reduction of immunity to rubella in women could pose risks such miscarriage. Methods We analyzed a nationally representative sample of individuals 12 years from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) for years 1999–2000 and 2003–2004 for whom PFAS measures were available. Our analytic strategy was to start with separate analyses for youth and adults controlling for several covariates including ethnicity and sex, as well as the interaction of these terms with PFASs. If there was a main effect of PFASs and an interaction term, we would stratify analyses of effect size. The outcome variable was Rubella IgG titers by quartile of perfluoroalkyl substances. Results After exclusion for missing data, the analyzed sample contained 581 adult women, 621 adult men, and 1012 youth. There was no significant effect of PFASs on immunity in youths but a significant effect of both PFOA and PFOS in adults, as well as a significant interaction of PFOA x sex and a borderline significant interaction of PFOS x sex. When effect size anal- yses were stratified by sex, a significant association between rubella titres and PFOA was found in men but not women and PFOS was not significant in either sex. Conclusions These results support our earlier studies showing sex specific responses to PFASs and indi- cate the importance of thinking carefully about analytic strategies in population based toxi- cology research

Small and Medium-Sized Towns in Europe: Conceptual, Methodological and Policy Issues

© 2017 Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG Despite that small and medium-sized towns (SMSTs) have been, and continue to be, a central part of the history of Europe, these places have largely been neglected by urban research. The ESPON TOWN project, on which this Special Issue builds, sought to redress this neglect performing a comparative analysis of their position and role across Europe. In this introductory paper we discuss some of the theoretical and methodological challenges when it came to identifying, studying and analysing SMSTs and the theoretical framework developed to inform our understanding of SMSTs. In particular, three themes are discussed. The first one is about the ontological problem of defining a town. Administrative, morphological and functional perspectives are considered. The second one reflects on a wide array of interpretative approaches about the relationship between towns and their regional context. The third one is about the thematic and multi-scalar perspectives that can characterise the policy approach to towns

The Creation of a Critical Care Admission Pressure Injury Prevention Cart to Reduce Hospital-Acquired Pressure Injuries

The goal of this process improvement initiative is to reduce hospital-acquired pressure injuries related to Covid-19 with Critical Care patients. Critically ill and ventilated patients require prone position therapy and prolonged ventilator times place the patient at risk for hospital acquired conditions and pressure injuries. The Critical Care team created a Critical Care Admission Pressure Injury Prevention Cart that contains preventative dressings for all pressure areas at risk. The Critical Care Admission Pressure Injury Prevention Cart has significantly reduced the pressure injury rate. With the emergence of the pandemic and additional surges, pressure injuries continued to be on the rise due to prone position therapy. The Critical Care team worked with the system and developed prone position protocols, which included preventative dressings for all areas at risk. Prior to the implementation of the admission cart, Critical Care ended fiscal year 2022, quarter one, with fifty-three hospital acquired pressure injuries. Last December and early January 2022 there was another surge of Covid-19. The Critical Care team implemented the admission cart in January 2022. From January 2022 through September 2022, there has been an 98% reduction. The cart has been successful for Critical Care, and Baptist Hospital implemented the cart in all high acuity areas. This cart was a multidisciplinary practice, which consists of nursing, the wound and skin team, respiratory care, and leadership working together towards the goal of patient safety and pressure injury prevention

Delineating Anaplasma phagocytophilum Ecotypes in Coexisting, Discrete Enzootic Cycles

Genetically distinct subpopulations have adapted to different niche

Social Class

Discussion of class structure in fifth-century Athens, historical constitution of theater audiences, and the changes in the comic representation of class antagonism from Aristophanes to Menander

Bacteriophage Lysin Mediates the Binding of Streptococcus mitis to Human Platelets through Interaction with Fibrinogen

The binding of bacteria to human platelets is a likely central mechanism in the pathogenesis of infective endocarditis. We have previously found that platelet binding by Streptococcus mitis SF100 is mediated by surface components encoded by a lysogenic bacteriophage, SM1. We now demonstrate that SM1-encoded lysin contributes to platelet binding via its direct interaction with fibrinogen. Far Western blotting of platelets revealed that fibrinogen was the major membrane-associated protein bound by lysin. Analysis of lysin binding with purified fibrinogen in vitro confirmed that these proteins could bind directly, and that this interaction was both saturable and inhibitable. Lysin bound both the Aα and Bβ chains of fibrinogen, but not the γ subunit. Binding of lysin to the Bβ chain was further localized to a region within the fibrinogen D fragment. Disruption of the SF100 lysin gene resulted in an 83±3.1% reduction (mean ± SD) in binding to immobilized fibrinogen by this mutant strain (PS1006). Preincubation of this isogenic mutant with purified lysin restored fibrinogen binding to wild type levels. When tested in a co-infection model of endocarditis, loss of lysin expression resulted in a significant reduction in virulence, as measured by achievable bacterial densities (CFU/g) within vegetations, kidneys, and spleens. These results indicate that bacteriophage-encoded lysin is a multifunctional protein, representing a new class of fibrinogen-binding proteins. Lysin appears to be cell wall-associated through its interaction with choline. Once on the bacterial surface, lysin can bind fibrinogen directly, which appears to be an important interaction for the pathogenesis of endocarditis